64. Bosko the Musketeer (1933)

Warner cartoon no. 63.
Release date: August 12, 1933.
Series: Looney Tunes.
Directed by: Hugh Harman.
Producers: Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising and Leon Schlesinger.
Starring: Johnny Murray (Bosko).
Animation: Rollin Hamilton and Robert Stokes.
Musical Score: Frank Marsales.

Our story begins with Bosko picking up posies in a field, and is having sentimental thought of his girlfriend, Honey - and is singing the verse "she loves me, she loves me not". Bruno follows Bosko on, and runs around a small tree (randomly) and then follows Bosko who continues to pull out petals off the flowers he is holding. Meanwhile, Honey is sweeping at down doing some dusting - and she is also humming to some sentimental music. As she sees a picture frame of Bosko, and immediately changes into an impression of Mae West, and says "You can be had!" Of course, the impression somehow seemed strange to me - but I wonder if Robert Stokes animated this part, as he animates Honey and Bosko skipping - which is similar to what he did animate in Bosko in Person.

Bosko enters Honey's house full of spirits and energy, as he is delighted to see her. Honey was sweeping a portrait of the 3 Musketeers that is on her Wall. She asks Bosko if the Musketeers "are grand"? Bosko chuckles and thinks that "it's nothing", and he pulls out an umbrella and he pretends that he is doing a sword fight with the umbrella, while Honey is singing in the background about Bosko being a brave musketeer. The background then fades from Bosko mimicking a sword fight with an umbrella into Bosko actually fighting the villains. Bosko then reaches a cornered point, and then he jabs his sword into the barrel of beer, and SWOOSHES the villains away. Bosko then enters a bar, and shouts "Howdy ho, etc.", we then see a title card that reads The Three Musketeers.

There is then a shot of the 3 Musketeers in the pub and they are all singing. Bosko runs along, and climbs onto a table, and he introduces to us who the musketeers are. They are: Athos, Amos and Andy - and obviously they were referring to Amos n' Andy which was a popular radio show at the time. Athos, was a character out of the 3 Musketeers (I think), but I find it extremely pointless that Harman-Ising only use one character out of the 3 musketeers, and name the other two "Amos and Andy", and it completely pointless, because there isn't a connection towards the other two names in the book, and the fictional character names themselves - but never mind let's pres son.

Bosko then raises his word and says the famous Musketeers line, "All for One and One for All", and the musketeers sing a song about it. Bosko then draws out his sword, and tries to break a table leg, but instead the blade gets twisted on the leg. Bosko pulls the sword out, and it looks like a cork opener, and he uses it to unscrew the cork of a champagne bottle. The bottle says "New Deal - 3.2%" (which according to TZ says that it was part of a deal that President Franklin Roosevelt as part of his promise for policies, and it happened at the end of the "prohibition". Bosko then brings along a glass of beer, and guzzles down the beer in one of the first musketeer's mouth (Athos), the 2nd musketeer (Amos) then lips his lips as if there is some type of assembly in this. The last musketeer (Andy) then does a "swallow" intimidation, and it is a fine gag - but I've seen it somewhere before in one of their cartoons. Wouldn't it be funnier if one of them burped? Anyway, their entertainment business managed to entertain the audience, and we see some bizarre Harman-Ising gags used as part of an applause like a man that honks his chicken like a horn??

We then see a shot of a thug (who is the main antagonist - I'm pressuming?) and he grabs hold of his nose, and shouts "Bah!", as if he didn't care about that bit of entertainment performance from the Musketeers and Bosko. He then starts to eat off parts of a chicken, and starts off with eating a turkey leg. He then puts the whole thing in his mouth, and then pulls the bones out showing that he ate the entire chicken in one bite. He appears to be so tough, and that he's the big man around here, that he uses a person's teeth (next to him) to unload the cork off the screw.

A door opens, and the crowd of people in the pub see Honey approach (and she's wearing modern clothing on?). Anyway, she shouts to her audience "Here I am you lucky people?" - Lucky, huh? How lucky? All of her audiene enjoy her tap-dancing performance that she performs (although it doesn't seem very exciting to look at) - and I think Bob McKimson did that scene, comparing to what his Honey looked like in Bosko in Person. Bosko is all "awe" about Honey's dancing and even asks the guy next to him, "Boy, ain't she keen?", and pats him on the back with his false teeth coming out - Ha ha, now that was something amusing.

The dancing movements seems to impress the villain who was eating the turkey from earlier. He comes up with a sneaky plan, and he rubs his hands to do so. He grabs Honey while she is dancing, and causes her to shout for help, and shouts "Bosko, help!" - is it me or is it that every fantasy land that's made up, she always seems to know Bosko? Anyway, I don't care - she knows him anyway in this story! So, the villain has captured Honey, and yet again here comes another comes another "villain plotting to capture girlfriend" sequence (Seen that before!).

Bosko runs into the scene and stops that from happening, and shouts at the villain, "Hey! You piper!", and then he draws out his sword, and they start a sword fight. But before they begin, the blades from both sword turn into hands and they shake each others'. They both perform a sword fight on each other, the villain then tries through Bosko's hat, and the plume is actually a chicken wrapped in feathers that clucks, but you notice immediately that there is another one after wards. The villain's sword is then badly damaged, and he calls a caddy to come and give him a spare and fresh sword, and he uses the caddy's beard to sand it. Bosko's sword is also damaged (as they clashed their sword into each other), so Bosko uses a pencil sharpener to give his blunt sword a sharp look again.

The villain then throws a dagger at Bosko by using it like a bow-and-arrow, but misses as Bosko manages to duck. Instead, the dagger ends up ripping off a lady's skirt and it is revealed that there is chickens and chicks in there, (which seems very wrong and very humorous). The sword fighting still continues, until Bosko ends up at a fireplace, (where he could burn himself), and he uses his foot to catapult some coal that lands on the villain's pants. The agony causes the villain to scream, and runs out of the pub never to be seen from Bosko again, and he won the duel.

 

Bosko then raises his sword with courage, and Honey runs up to admire him - and we cut back to a different background, with Bosko's usual outfit on, and the sword fades into an umbrella. Honey says, "Aw, Bosko - I don't believe that?" with Bosko's reply "Was you dere, Charlie?" and it is a dated reference from a radio character played by Jack Pearl - and that's all folks.

 Overall, this cartoon was very boring and it was basically a singing and dancing routine. In fact, the villain was very close to have captured Honey, but all we got instead was a very tedious sword fight sequence, which was just as bad as seeing the villain trying to ruin the picture. It seemed very low-budget in my opinion, and it reminded me of a reused story version of Bosko's Knight Mare but done differently. Well, with this Bosko cartoon now reviewed, we only have one more Bosko cartoon to review in this challenge, and also two more in the Harman-Ising era! Stay tuned and keep commenting!